Cathie Black has resigned as chancellor (superintendent) of New York City Schools. Actually, she was asked to step down. Black was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the position in November, 2010.

She had no experience as either an educator or education administrator, and no government experience either. Her appointment was an extremely puzzling event. Several long term members of the city’s educational administrative system resigned in protest of her appointment. Due to her complete lack of credentials for the job, it was necessary for the New York State Education Commission to grant her a waiver. David Steiner, who issued the controversial waiver to allow Black to take the job, has resigned his position with the Commission.

Black was, by all accounts, a complete flop. She lasted just about 96 days on the job. Apparently her supposed qualifications for the job were that she was good at business. She was successful in the publishing business. How this was supposed to translate into being able to head up a large and complicated inner city school system remains a mystery.

What should be obvious, but apparently isn’t, is that the educational system isn’t a business. While it seems that quite a few big business types believe that it is, the reality is that it isn’t.

Certainly, education has its business side. All of the buildings, buses, books, and budgets correctly should be looked after by someone with very good business skills and acumen. A very good chief financial officer is an absolute must, from the smallest to the largest districts in the US.

The actual running of these districts, strangely enough, should be done by people who have the experience in the field to understand how complex and wacky the system actually is. I say this lovingly, as someone who spent 36 years as a teacher. I know how strange it actually is.

There continue to be those who attempt, on the basis of a very brief encounter with education, to convince others that they know how to do it better. Keep in mind that within the profession, it takes about 5 years to get out of rookie status. There is a very high teacher drop out rate prior to that fifth year.

Their most common trajectory is this: teach for 2 or 3 years, bail out, start, or sign up with, a “non-profit educational” business, make lots of money, leave that to start another “non-profit” with the goal of re-inventing the entire system, or get a political appointment to a big city district prior to bailing on that to make a fortune with your own “non-profit”.

“Non-profit” is code for paying yourself and your buddies all of the money that would normally be in the profit category, thereby being able to say you run a “non-profit” entity.

It would be obviously absurd to appoint the Eduskeptic to run a hospital, transit system, airline, or any other large enterprise. A complete lack of credentials to do any of those would seem to eliminate the possibility of such a thing happening. Yet, somehow, when it comes to schools, logic disappears from the thinking of the politicians.

Once again it is necessary to say that the educational system has, does, and always will, need improvement. It remains necessary to say that it is not a business system, though it has a business side to it. It is an educational system.

While the so-called policy experts and reformers go about making outrageous claims and money, teachers continue to teach, and good administrators continue to oversee a complicated endeavor.

Michael Bloomberg, and any other mayor who has done what he did, should, rightfully, be embarrassed by his actions and the resulting insult to education.